Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

June 29, 2006

I'm not sure exactly when this happened, my guess is earlier in the week but Chowhound has a brand new look courtesy of mule design. Wow, it's going to take me a bit of time to poke around but what a transformation for one of the best food communities on-line. Gone are the old threaded boards and it looks like they've added profiles, and post tracking. Very interesting to read the user comments on the Site Talk forum to see their reactions to the changes. This whole redesign was begun by gathering feedback from the members so in some ways I think they may be gentle. Chowhound is part of CNET now and I wonder what elements they are going to add, video, menus, blogs, etc. The challenge will be maintaining the community that got them here in the first place.

June 28, 2006

Jeff Jarvis on last night'sPaidContent mixer. I think/hope he is wrong though the vibe at the last NY Tech meetup did more to throw me off than being in a room of marketers. On the other hand, my friends from gURL.com pointed out that so many of the people they met were in mobile so perhaps there are bubbles here and there. Jarvis is very tall.Everyone had to wear nametags, I did hear a few pitches but so what, good luck to them. It was interesting to hear Arthur Sulzberger say that the World Cup blogs at the Times were hugely popular, I know they are with me. The play by play is great, and they are onto something about how bad ESPN's coverage is. so bad in fact that people would rather watch it in Spanish.

June 26, 2006

A favorite blog/tool thing - The Huffington Post People Ranking mash-up tool on the Eat The Press section of their site. They have an ever changing array of smart polls and you can enter your own terms to add to the mix.

"I look at blogs as the hyper-interactive magazines of the future, only
with far greater ability to create communities and expand into new
areas." Alan Patricof on his (excellent in IMHO) decision to fund ContentNext publisher of paidcontent.org and moconews.net as quoted by Rafat in the announcment. Congrats!

June 23, 2006

Harriet, a tortoise that Darwin brought back with him from his travels to the Galapagos has died at the age of 176 of a heart attack caused by the excitement at Australia's getting through to the second round of the World Cup.

And, yes, the company's growth is amazing. But so, it seems worth
observing, was the early growth of user-driven companies like Geocities
and Tripod, neither of which proved to be particularly good
businesses. So with the MySpace hype-cup overflowing, it seems worth
taking a peek at where MySpace stands as a business (as opposed to a cultural phenomenon), and where it might eventually go.

On the first score, based on Newscorp's recent 10Q,
we can first note that MySpace is so irrelevant to the financial
performance of the larger entity that it doesn't even merit
describing. In the MD&A, the company describes in detail the
performance of each of its other businesses, including its small book
business, but it doesn't so much as mention MySpace.

Judging from the year over year comparisons in the "Other" category,
in which MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive Media have been
unceremoniously dumped, we can assume that the company might have
contributed somewhere up to $100 million in revenue in the last quarter
($400 million run-rate), while losing up to about $50 million.
Although these revenue numbers are not tiny, they pale in comparison to
those of Yahoo, Google, and other Internet leaders. Unlike the revenue
at the other Internet leaders, moreover, they appear to come with
significant losses, suggesting that the MySpace business model is
nowhere near as leverageable as those of its larger brethren.
Geocities and Tripod, if memory serves, had a similar problem. (via IWantMedia)

Traditional publishing companies heavily invest in a content
strategy supported by authenticity and credibility. This guides their
business of creating a perception of premium-valued inventory.
Self-created content found on MySpace, on the other
hand, is often heavily invested in self-promotion. The publishing
business model at MySpace by definition lacks a clearly defined content
strategy and the guiding principles of authenticity and credibility.
The rates for the inventory sold currently
on MySpace are indicative of a lack of perceived value.

MySpace is less like a publisher and more like a property owner for
what appears to be a gigantic online flea market for young adults to
sell their wares. Web cams, mortgage rates, music, or just their own
self worth--everyone seems to be selling
something. So it begs the question--if MySpace is crawling with sellers
selling to sellers, does it make sense for advertisers to advertise in
an arena with no buyers?

Back in 1999, Yahoo paid $3.6 billion dollars for GeoCities, a network
of 19 million monthly users at the time, who produced their own content
that was broadly categorized and sold to advertisers (sound familiar?).
GeoCities, like MySpace, struggles
with "appropriate environment" issues--but for all we know, the
acquisition helped Yahoo secure that number-one traffic position they
maintain today. Ironically, one of the senior executives involved in
selling GeoCities to Yahoo was recently hired
by Fox to help invigorate ad sales for MySpace. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

*Tangled web indeed as I find it odd to be quoting Henry Blodgett on whether or not something is a big piece of nothing.

June 21, 2006

Song continues, "But I'm not allowed to send you any pictures." A NYT article about camps trying to prevent campers from posting things on blogs, myspace, etc. about their experiences. Camps are copyrighting their names, and logos so they can legally ask their campers to pull down their posts. Perhaps some of the Indian tribes for whom many camps are named should beat them to it? Isn't this really a dramatic overreaction to the fact that campers can now prove, with a simple post to flickr, that the food and conditions on display during Parents Day are just a charade! ? That color war is in fact a brutal experience, that playing left field really sucks? Where were these services when I was forced to swim in a freezing lake, and got picked on by older campers? MOM I WANT TO COME HOME, LOOK, LOOK, IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE SLIDE SHOW!Lyrics to Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

As if following up on my mention yesterday - Wonkette has posted facebook photos of Pierce Bush the President's nephew and younger doppelganger. One has to wonder what our current history would be had facebook and myspace been around in the late 1960's.

Interview with the hacker, Gary McKinnon, who is accused of breaking into NASA websites. He was on the hunt for evidence of UFO's and claims he found them. What is really interesting is that he did it on a 56k modem and a dial-up connection, and wasn't able to download any of the photos he found.

gripe 2 - I'm involved in a dispute with the buyer, or rather non-buyer because he "forgot he bid", of a bike I sold on e-bay. As a NYer I don't relate well to "oops, my bad" school of non-apologies. It's my first bad experience so far on the site and hopefully their unpaid item process will make everything work out. How does this relate to social media you ask - well it doesn't in a strict sense but it does make me think of the images of politicians kids getting drunk and partying that Wonkette keeps finding on facebook and myspace. It is rather amazing. Oops Dad,my bad, did I screw up your campaign?

I don't mean to imply that I don't like silly videos. This morning I saw The Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments video from Eepybird. It's great and has also earned it's creators $15,000. Posted on Revver which shares revenue with contributors. (via PaidContent)

An interview in the WSJ with Jim BuckMeister of Craigslist who talks about listening to customers and keeping things free and has this quote, "Well, the revenue aspect is really an afterthought," Mr. Buckmaster
insists, with a Zen-like calm. A seven-figure afterthought. I'd like to
have that kind of afterthought, I think to myself. Mr. Buckmaster
appears, at times, to be almost queasy about "revenue." Later in the
interview, he said: "If I look across the Internet at the big Internet
companies, there's a large proportion of their staff that are devoted
in various ways to trying to maximize revenue. Those employees I don't
think are delivering much bang for the buck to the end user."

The day Jazil won the Belmont Stakes -- June 10 -- ABC Sports
visited Barbaro and put him on television. There was even a TV set
placed in the ICU. Would Barbaro watch the Belmont?

At first, he
seemed interested: When the call to the post sounded, the 3-year-old
colt walked to the front of his stall, ears pricked and head up,
Sweeney said. By the time the field turned for home, though, Barbaro
had turned away, walked to the back of his stall and relieved himself.

WashingtonPost launches PostGlobal - an ongoing discussion of great thinkers on specific topics - A friend of mine and me were talking about something like this with a POD component. It will be interesting to watch. (via IWantMedia)

Donald Trump caught cheating at golf. Not really that surprising but it is interesting that TMZ got the photo. There was a very respected man who was a member at my father's golf club who was caught cheating. No one looked at him the same way again and he eventually resigned. It is something you just don't do.

A teaser - my friend and client Ron Suskind has a book coming out on the 20th called The One Percent Doctrine . It is going to be explosive but it also under strict blackout, I don't even have the copy for the site yet (joy oh joy) That said his site is being updated so take a look on the 19th. Here is the current Amazon Book Description

Relying
on unique access to former and current government officials, this book
will reveal for the first time how the U.S. government - from President
Bush on down - is frantically improvising to fight a new kind of war.
Where is the enemy? What have been the real victories and defeats since
September 11? How are we actually fighting this war and how can it
possibly be won?

Little,
in fact, has been revealed about the nature of this struggle and the
methods being used. This book will change all that. Readers will, for
the first time, see harrowing close calls in America where thousands of
lives have been saved - and learn how terrorists have artfully adapted
to America's early successes in capturing al Qaeda operatives.

Suskind
will show readers what he calls "the invisible battlefield" - a global
matrix where U.S. spies race to catch soldiers of jihad before they
strike. It is a real life spy thriller with the world's future at
stake.

Suskind's report is filled with astonishing disclosures
and will profoundly reframe the debate about a war that, each day,
redefines America and its place in the world.

I've found two places near my office to watch games or parts of games as is more often the case.

Stich - A sports bar of sorts with so so food on 37th between 7th and 8th Avenue - closer to 8th. Lots of televisions and a projector and screen over the middle of the bar. I'm amazed by the number of people who are showing up and, also by the number of people who seem to live in the neighborhood at least I think they do since they are wearing shorts and flip flops.

Lazarro's - The odd pizza place located on the second floor of a small building on 38th and 7th - closer to 7th. very good thin crust pizza which you order by half or whole pie. They have a small bar/counter with three stools where you can eat and stare at the small television broadcasting the games in Spanish - Gooooooal.

June 14, 2006

MarketSound - a service that replicates the sound of a trading floor for people trading in today's electronic exchanges, or for people who have undergone multiple voice cord operations from screaming at other people on the floor and miss the action. Sadly I can't find a sample. (via the WSJ)

"The media business has been reduced to pure transaction." Domaining" the name for creating fake websites filled with search ads. A really good article about how Google's AdSense is creating an environment where companies like NameMedia which owns 650,000 domain names will undermine the Internet.

The NYT discovers the Googleplex on the banks of the Columbia River. I find myself laughing at David Pogue's blog post about it's location in The Dalles.

Jason Kottke links to a post doubting gravity, on a site called Christianforums, that may or may not be a parody but one thing that is pretty funny, regardless, are the icons that the members are using.

While looking for the latest version of MultiBlog on David Rayne's site I noticed that he has joined the IndieKarma network. It looks interesting as a micro-payment idea. You deposit money into an account (they give you a dollar to start), then they give a penny (or more) for every page you read to the site owner.

So teens spend 3 hours on-line and 3 hours watching TV each day. What do they do when they are on line? Read the article.

Interesting article about ASME division of advertising and editorial extending from print to on-line. However it seems that this wall softens in more social network activities, according to these media heavies. It certainly weakened for the 8-to-15 year old whyvillians who according to the NYT are being given the chance to buy a virtual Toyota Scion to drive around their fake world.

Thank you Wikipedia for explaining to me why Group C (Holland, Argentina, Ivory Coast, Serbia & Montenegro) was called the Group of Death. Here I was thinking it had to do with politics and history and not the fact that they are in a situation "where all the teams present in one group are considered to be roughly equal in skill, or one or more of the 'underdog' teams could prove to
be a 'banana skin' for the favourite (or favourites) to proceed. Thus, due to the small difference in quality between the members, any team could plausibly qualify and any could plausibly be eliminated. It is, in other words, the most unpredictable group of the tournament."

"Whatever can be done will be done," said Friedman in his speech. "If you've got an idea, don't wait six months. Because there are so many people connected and so many cheap tools of collaboration and connectivity. ... The one question is whether it will be done by you or to you." - Thomas Friedman at the Webby Awards.In addition to the being the source of the quote E&P had this to say about the event; "While the New York Times may have dubbed the Webbys the "Oscars of the Internet" there was a distinct sense in the crowd that no one knew who anyone was. Of course, it is a medium where everyone is, for the most part, trapped behind keyborards and screens. The room was full of the kind of anonymous Internet celebrities who make millions behind the scenes (or behind their keyboards) while never cracking through the public consciousness."...and we are defining "the public consciousness" how?

Fred Wilson has a post that suggests that Yahoo should put together a portal using their web services like flickr, del.icio.us., and Upcoming. I think that is a great idea, in fact for over three months joshuamack.com has been a bit of a personal portal for me. I've put up a flickr feed and my del.icio.us links and tag cloud. Now I'll have to add Upcoming. Funny, recently over the weekend I was thinking about whether it made me too exposed and whether I wasn't saving things to del.icio.us as I didn't want them to be too public. I'm still thinking about this in light of the articles about employers looking at Myspace pages and the NSA working towards sweeping up info from social networks. Of course I could always have another del.icio.us account for stuff I didn't want to share.